


Morning's Corrective

by PFDiva



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Aftercare, Blood, Consensual Kink, Crying, Gen, Gore, M/M, Men Crying, Other, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Whipping, i'm not sure this is safe and sane but it's consensual as hecky, lots of aftercare, lots of blood, mild panic attack?, to go with lots of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:44:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14586249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PFDiva/pseuds/PFDiva
Summary: Declan's Corrective does Morning's Observation a favor.





	Morning's Corrective

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings, there is a lot of blood in this. Everything is very consensual, but if you don't like blood, please don't read this. There's aftercare and everything is mostly on the up and up, but dear god please be safe.

Declan's Corrective ran Morning's Observation through the drill one last time: "Show me your go ahead." Signet melted up out of the ground, offering him a gracious smile. "Okay. Show me pause." Signet dissipated into sparkles, replaced by Tender Sky. Corrective had spent a bit more time looking at Tender than at Signet, so he could tell that Tender was just slightly off, but in the normal way where memory couldn't be perfect. Observation had flattened Tender's curves a little, but this wasn't about her, or even about Corrective. It was about Observation.

"Show me your panic stop." Tender melted away and a wall of white light encircled Observation, who finally huffed his annoyance and craned his head around to look at Corrective.

"I know all my signals, you know all my signals, can we just _go_ already?"

Corrective took a long, slow drag from his cigarette to hide his nerves as Observation's wall of light faded away. Observation was neither as young or as small as he felt to Corrective, but he was awful young next to Corrective and--well, wiry was a better word than small, but the sentiment persisted.

Observation took Corrective's nerves for condemnation and sagged in his restraints, "Unless you've changed your mind?"

"I haven't," Corrective assured him, a hand on Observation's shoulder turning the young man away, "Just making sure we're all clear on everything."

"Yeah, I know. I got you."

Corrective smoothed his hand over the planes of Observation's naked back, less a caress and more an appraisal, "You know this is gonna hurt and scar for real, right?"

A nod. "I know."

"And you want me to keep going even if you bleed?"

"I want you to make me bleed." The ferocity in the words caused Corrective to take his hand off of Observation, whose shoulders hunched in on themselves.

Alright then.

Corrective stepped back to a comfortable distance, pulling a leather flogger out of the veil and taking a few slow test swings at Observation's back.

The smack of leather against flesh wasn't a terribly jarring sound at this velocity, but Observation sucked in a hissing breath like it hurt more than it sounded like it did. If it worked for him, it worked for Corrective.

Corrective continued the slow, easy swings for what felt like a very long time, watching Observation's pale back gradually change from beige to pink to red. In that time, Observation's pained hisses graduated to muted whimpers and then soft crying.

Forewarned that it would happen, Corrective ignored Observation's tears. He couldn't see Observation's face, which was a dubious mercy. He could see Observation's head dropping forward, could see the way Observation clung to the ropes holding his arms spread wide over his head. Corrective could see the ground slowly coming up under Observation to relieve the tension in his shoulders as his legs slowly lost the ability to support his weight.

Not that Corrective was hitting Observation's legs. Observation only wanted his back hit, and that's where Corrective aimed. It wasn't an issue until he caught a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. Red. Blood.

The pause signal was Tender Sky and she melted up out of the ground. Observation's head came up like he'd been shot in the chin, "That's not me!"

"That's not you," Corrective agreed, and he could see the confused slump of Observation's before him. "I need a break, kiddo."

"You'll come back?"

"I'll come back," he promised. Corrective started to turn away, then hesitated when Observation stayed where he was. "You want anything?" Observation weakly shook his head. Made sense. It wasn't aftercare time yet. Corrective didn't ask again, leisurely striding away precisely because he wanted to run.

Now, Corrective had seen his fair share of blood, guts, and nastier. He'd been the cause of plenty of people's blood and guts escaping their bodies, sometimes at high velocity.

Thus, there was no explanation for the way he tucked himself into a sheltered little alcove in the private grotto he and Observation had created together. There was no explanation for the way his blood-sticky fingers fumbled his cigarette and lighter, or the way he stared at the blood-stained flogger like it was a toddler's dismembered arm.

After two metallic cigarettes, Corrective could breathe again, and he poked his head over his knees to make sure his surroundings hadn't significantly changed in the past ten minutes. He could see Signet aimlessly wandering around. He had a split-second to wonder how she'd gotten in here before he remembered that she was Observation's go-ahead signal. She had a plate of spaghetti--she usually did when Observation produced her. Corrective had no idea why he associated the excerpt with spaghetti, but there you go.

Corrective stubbed out the remains of his second cigarette and dropped the butt, getting to his feet. He wouldn't have left Observation if they were in a physical space, but they weren't, and Observation could get himself out if he were distressed. The space itself would also fall apart around them if either fell unconscious or decided to leave. They'd made it that way on purpose.

When Corrective returned to Observation, the young man was sitting on the elevated ground, softly weeping, his hands clinging to the ropes holding him up. Every few moments, he would shift in a way that had to be hell on his back.

Corrective had to remind himself all over again that Observation wanted this. Observation wanted to hurt and wanted to bleed, for reasons that Corrective wasn't willing to ask about. It was daunting enough to trust someone with a request like this without getting interrogated half to death about it.

Tender walked past Corrective and into Observation's line of sight. She was definitely Corrective's creation again. Observation's version of Tender always wore a pitying smile, one ear pointed up, the other twisted to the side. Corrective’s version of her glared, her ears pinned back, arms disapprovingly folded under her ample assets. She'd made an impression.

Either way, when she caught Observation's attention, she melted into Signet, sans spaghetti. Observation immediately got his knees under himself again, turning his head just enough to ask Corrective for assurance he was actually there without actually looking.

"You ready?" Corrective asked. Observation faced forward, giving a curt little nod. The sound Observation made when Corrective hit him again sent chills down the older man's spine. And not completely in a good way. He kept going. He could tap out and Observation wouldn't judge him, he wouldn't judge himself. But it was a fascinating peek into the kid's head, in a lot of ways. He kept going.

Observation's blood began to fly long before he began wailing--loud, aching sobs that made Corrective feel like a monster. The only reason he kept going was because the first time he hesitated, Signet appeared, standing in front of Observation with her hands on his bloodied shoulders, smiling benevolently at Corrective. Seeing her in meatspace was going to be strange. Corrective's arm began to ache and he switched hands, but kept going.

By the time Observation tapped out, he'd shrieked his voice out, the top of his pants were bloody, Corrective's hands were bloody, the flogger was bloody, half the environment was bloody. Signet took her hands off of Observation's shoulders and turned into Tender, smiling that pitying smile, one ear anxiously flicking. Corrective stopped.

"You done?"

Observation's ropes began to unwind themselves and Corrective lurched forward to be sure he caught the boy before he hit the ground. He ended up further smeared in blood. There was no graceful way to carry a hundred-plus pounds of slippery, sticky dead weight, so Corrective didn't try. He slung Observation over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, closing his ears to the wheezing, desperate sobs his motions caused. Observation had asked for this and he'd gotten it.

Corrective carefully poured Observation into a half-full bath of lukewarm water, meticulously stripping Observation's pants and underwear off. They'd get stuck to the kid and cause more pain. After a brief self-assessment, Corrective stripped himself down, too, joining a half-conscious Observation.

It took an uncomfortably long time to clean Observation enough to get him out of the bath and facedown onto a bed. His back continued to bleed freely and Corrective pressed water-dampened towels to the flayed flesh so that it could clot at least a little. Eventually, Corrective was willing to apply antiseptic and proper bandages.

That done, he went through the effort of cleaning up all of the blood. He scrubbed it from his clothing and from Observation's. He scrubbed it from every surface in the bathroom and the elevated ground where Observation had knelt. He didn't have to scrub the blood away by hand. It was probably more difficult to clean here than it would have been in the real world because he didn't want to be done.

Between scrubbings, he checked on Observation to make sure all was as well as it could be. Observation wept into the pillows for a long time before finally succumbing to sleep. The private grotto they'd made together dissolved as Observation lost consciousness, leaving the pristine interior of Corrective's ship in its wake.

Corrective kept a wary eye on Observation over the next few days. He could have left Observation's care to someone better-skilled at doctoring, but this was part of the scene, too: the aftercare. He'd damaged Observation, now he had to make sure to put the kid back together afterwards.

Observation slept a lot at first, then began carefully moving around with Corrective's help. He didn't ask why Corrective was his only caretaker, and he didn't argue the care he was given.

After a couple days, Observation could walk around on his own and get dressed with minimal suffering. Nothing turned out to need stitches, but there would be extensive scarring. Corrective never did get around to asking what Observation wanted commemorated on his back in pain.

Seeing Signet again turned out not to be weird, either.


End file.
